Oakland
Background * Also for Oak Hill * Also see Hill District Links * http://www.pittsburghneighborhoodtours.com/pr13/neighborhoods/default.asp?nHood=5 * Oakland Zone program announced in April 2009 Blogs & Sites * LandOrSlum website covered in The Pitt News about slum landlords in September 2007. * Lewis Lehe has a South Oakland / economics blog, http://www.blogoftheallies.blogspot.com Media * Oakland groups get $482,000 for community improvement P-G, April 2009 * Proposal angers Oak Hill residents from Post-Gazette in June, 2006. Developer also raps city's expansion plan :The Pittsburgh Housing Authority will try an end run to enlarge the Oak Hill community, bypassing a disputed piece of land near the University of Pittsburgh in favor of expanding toward the Hill District and inviting other developers to get involved." P-G Editorial: Finish Oak Hill / O'Connor should keep a model community on track : Source: June 26, 2006, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06177/701156-192.stm You see it in the newspaper and on the TV news. Drive-by shootings, open-air drug deals, children caught in a crossfire and seniors becoming easy prey. It can happen anywhere, but it happens all too often in low-income public housing communities. American society learned, perhaps too late, that packing the poor in densely populated tenements was no way to house people and, worse yet, no way for a neighborhood to take care of itself. An enlightened approach to subsidized housing is to create mixed-income communities, where a diverse collection of people maintain their properties, sustain the quality of life and rate the same degree of attention from City Hall as other citizens. One such neighborhood is Pittsburgh's Oak Hill, a model since 2003 for how to mix subsidized housing with market-rate properties and create a place to live that is as safe as it is beautiful. Unfortunately, Mayor Bob O'Connor and the city housing authority are about to wreck paradise. The 639 homes in Oak Hill, which sits at the top of the Hill District near a fringe of the Pitt campus, have been a successful replacement for the housing-project squalor of Allequippa Terrace. Today if a Pittsburgher dropped in from the sky on these streets, he or she might think it was one of the city's glossy new neighborhoods, like Washington's Landing or Summerset at Frick Park. But Oak Hill's light-colored townhouses and multi-hued brick apartments, which make up Phase 1, are only the start. The attractive properties house a population that is 70 percent low-income. That's an improvement over the concentration of poor who lived in Allequippa Terrace, which has long since been demolished, but it still lacks the mix of income levels that would ensure a stable future for the neighborhood. Two more phases of construction by Boston-based developer Beacon/Corcoran Jennison will deliver another 450 homes, including 200 on a prime plateau called Robinson Court, in the shadow of Pitt's Trees Hall. Because of Robinson's level setting and panoramic view of Downtown, it is considered Oak Hill's best shot at attracting the higher-end homes and incomes that will improve the residential mixture. Though these plans were set forth in 1995 by then Mayor Tom Murphy, the Pittsburgh Housing Authority, Allequippa Terrace residents and the developer, they're in jeopardy now because the University of Pittsburgh wants to buy Robinson Court's 15 acres for $3.5 million and convert them to athletic fields. Last Thursday housing authority board Chairman Dennis Regan said Robinson Court is "off the table right now." That is a tragic mistake. Mayor O'Connor and the authority are trying to repackage and redirect Oak Hill away from the prime home sites of Robinson Court and toward Addison Terrace, which the authority would like to convert to a mixed-income community as well. The mayor says he wants to make sure Oak Hill isn't "isolated" and so he wants to extend the neighborhood toward Centre Avenue. That's a worthy concern if it's genuine, but the city should finish Oak Hill first, as originally designed, then spread its success elsewhere. By shifting gears now, after contracts have been signed and agreements with residents have been made, the O'Connor administration is risking a legal battle or a construction stalemate -- and that could ruin everything. Not only would selling off this prime parcel to Pitt compromise Oak Hill's chances for permanent success, but it would also be a bad financial deal for the city. Since Pitt is a tax-exempt institution, the city will get the sale price of the land from the university but no future property tax revenue. If Robinson Court sprouts 200 units of housing, however, the developer projects Pittsburgh will reap $24.8 million in property taxes and $6.4 million in wage taxes over the next 30 years. The O'Connor administration's change of direction looks like a smokescreen to back out of the city's pledge to complete this neighborhood, with the unstated intention of selling land to the university. By inviting other developers to submit proposals, it is also tampering with Oak Hill's formula for success. Mayor O'Connor should focus on what's best for Pittsburgh, not what's good for Pitt. Although the university is an important member of the community, a major employer and a good citizen, it has more options for obtaining athletic fields than this corner of the Hill District does for achieving an ideal residential mix. Last summer in this space we called the choice between soccer fields and city homes a "no-brainer." Ten 10 months later, we wonder what's clouding the brains of city leaders who should be forging ahead on Oak Hill. Home to: * Bernard Friedman, wrote LTE Insights * Review commission, city squaring off over Oakland site P-G, August 2006 -- ''A battle over a proposed medical building in Oakland is pitting the city against its own Historic Review Commission. The city has joined the building's developer, the Elmhurst Co., in appealing to Allegheny County Common Pleas Court the commission's decision in July to reject the project. The move could force the city, which typically represents the commission, to hire a private attorney to defend the review panel. category:where